Heck yes I eat locally grown! My own garden every year, plus exchange with the neighbors. Hey it's nothing to open the door in the summer to find bags of squash, cucumbers, sweet corn, etc dropped off by one of the nice farm families around here. We do the same when there is a surplus. In the past I have raised chickens for meat and eggs too.

One thing though, if the doorbell rings late at night and all you find is a burning paper bag on the front step, don't try to stomp out the flames. And don't try to smother the flames with the Mrs. new leather coat either. They tend to not forget those precious moments . . .

I seldom read posts by smitty, merrill or bozo but have no problem with them posting anything. If I am offended by anyone's post I hit "suggest removal". If it's good enough for LJW it stays, if not it is deleted.

Love that local organic tofu produced from local organic soybeans mixed with plenty of local veggies...... now we're talking fun and YUMO!

One local producers delivers door to door with a bicycle,some folks grow a bit too much so sharing is a nice feature plus a few purchases at the market and the Merc keeps things moving right along. The market has some beautiful local leafy greens and bell peppers etc etc etc.

Meanwhile: Buying Local: How It Boosts the Economy
Buying close to home may be more than a feel-good, it's-worth-paying-more-for-local matter. A number of researchers and organizations are taking a closer look at how money flows, and what they're finding shows the profound economic impact of keeping money in town—and how the fate of many communities around the nation and the world increasingly depend on it.

many local economies are languishing not because too little cash comes in, but as a result of what happens to that money. "Money is like blood. It needs to keep moving around to keep the economy going," he says, noting that when money is spent elsewhere—at big supermarkets, non-locally owned utilities and other services such as on-line retailers—"it flows out, like a wound."

By shopping at the corner store instead of the big box, consumers keep their communities from becoming what the NEF calls "ghost towns" (areas devoid of neighborhood shops and services) or "clone towns", where Main Street now looks like every other Main Street with the same fast-food and retail chains.

According to Susan Witt, Executive Director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, "buy local" campaigns serve another function: alerting a community about gaps in the local market. For instance, if consumers keep turning to on-line or big-box stores for a particular product—say, socks—this signals an opportunity for someone local to make and sell socks.

This is the way product innovations get made, says Witt. "The local producer adds creative elements that make either the product or materials used more appropriate to the place." For example, an area where sheep are raised might make lambs wool socks and other goods.

The point is not that communities should suddenly seek to be self-sufficient in all ways, but rather, says Boyle, "to shift the balance. Can you produce more locally? Of course you can if the raw materials are there, and the raw materials are often human beings."

An estimated 80% of processed foods sold in the U.S. contain genetically modified organisms. Yet GMO foods are totally unlabeled.

For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied their basic right to know because of a flawed regulatory system that has relied on corporate science without adequate peer-reviewed testing and scientific oversight.

It's time for that to change.

Tell the FDA: Label GMO foods!

Already more than 40 countries around the world require labeling of foods that contain GMOs. While Americans who live in the "land of the free" have no idea what's in our food, citizens in Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Japan, Russian and even China have the legal right to know.

A recent poll shows that 93% of Americans support mandatory labeling of GMOs.

Even President Obama has said he is in favor of labeling GMOs. In a 2007 campaign speech he promised to "let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they're buying." But he hasn't done it.

Last week the Center for Food Safety filed a petition with the FDA, and now more than 400 businesses, co-ops and organizations are calling on the FDA to immediately implement mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.

I have a small herb garden and yes it saves me money and I love my pesto. My tomato plants were full of promise but very disappointing. I went on several NLawrence hunts for home tomatoes this summer. Not a good summer for tomatoes. I read all the nasty comments about local produce and think they have lost their mind. Local tomatoes, fresh vegetables, real chicken over the weird flabby cheap chicken meat . If you haven't eaten home grown tomatoes and preferred them over the shipped, your mama raised you wrong.

Well, GMO doesn't generally refer to hybridizing. It refers to putting pig genes in tomato plants in a lab (still Kosher, btw - so that's good), or using genes from Agrobacterium CP4 to make "Round up Ready" crops.

Hybridization and selective breeding is nothing that nature doesn't do on its own. Nature does not crossbreed plants with pigs. In nature, agrobacteria cause tumors in plants - only after some significant lab tinkering do they let us spray herbicides willy nilly.

Will GMO stuff make you grow a third ear? Who knows. Cancer is more likely, but there isn't a ton of GMO stuff out there and the majority of it is probably safe. You're probably more likely to get cancer from all that Round Up they spray around. The real problem is that it contaminates non-GMO crop fields via cross-pollination; moves into our food system unlabelled; and no new studies are performed on new GMO crops to ensure that they are safe. The fear is that eventually something will hit the market that CAN harm us and we won't know until it's too late. What's more, we might find it difficult to find an uncontaminated strain of the crop when we do decide that we don't want GMO.

That said - you can safely walk into the store and buy fresh food without worrying about it being modified. There are no genetically modified animals on the market (questionable selective breeding, perhaps, but no cows with bird genes or anything like that); and very little fresh produce has been modified. Even our pig-tomato was a market failure; it could not compete with non-pig tomatoes: it does not appear on store shelves anymore.

They are able to genetically modify animals by the way: similar to how agrobacteria transfer genetic material to plants and alter plant DNA, lentiviruses do the same to animal cells. This is why GMO animals are not popular: if lentiviruses can alter the genes of the cow, can it not also alter our genes? That's probably the true "sky is falling" fear of the anti-GMO crowd.

I am genetically modified. 200 years ago I most likely would have been 8 inches shorter, my teeth would have been gone by age 30 and I would never have made it to my present age. And my lawn mower would have had hooves.

Methinks, with 1500+ posts, that thuja is suffering from pot/kettle syndrome. The posters that he mentioned are half the reason I boot up this here 'pooter system every day. Well, maybe not odeo cuz I don't understand his shtick most of the time. I hope he post even more, though, cuz mebbe I'll figure it out. Besides, somebody has to keep giving Alex' button pushing finger a workout.